Determination of atrazine and simazine in water and soil using polyclonal and monoclonal antibodies in enzyme‐linked immunosorbent assays

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Abstract
An enzyme‐linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) was developed as a rapid, reproducible and cost‐effective method for routine analysis of atrazine and simazine in environmental samples. Atrazine recoveries from C18 solid phase extractions (SPE) of water spiked from 0.1 ppb to 100 ppb showed good correlations with gas chromatography (GC), [14C] atrazine radioassay and ELISA methods. The C18 cartridges demonstrated very good recovery for extracting and concentrating the herbicide by all three analytical methods. Comparison between ELISA and GC for analysis of 75 well water samples showed no false negatives and a low (5%) occurrence of false positives. Soil extracts from a controlled simazine spill were also analyzed by GC and ELISA, with excellent correlation between the two methods. Characterization of the s‐triazine assay for tolerance to organic solvents and salts demonstrated the method to be resistant to such modifiers. Additionally, comparison of two monoclonal and two polyclonal antibodies raised against triazine structures were made to assess the performance of the two types of bioreagents. The ELISA method offered sensitivity, accuracy and precision which were competitive with the GC methods. The throughput and cost of the ELISA method offers advantages over traditional extraction and analysis of the s‐triazines on a routine basis.